Muslim women give no exemption in passport photos

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the same standards should be applied to everyone when it comes to passport photographs.

He put forward this opinion at a meeting with delegation representatives at the Third Worldwide Congress of Tatars.

The Supreme Court of Tatarstan this week upheld a Kazan regional court ruling forbidding Muslim women to cover their heads.

Kazan's Vakhitovsky Court rejected a complaint to this effect brought by three Muslim women against the republic's interior ministry. They believed that the ministry's passport-visa department had unjustly acted in requiring them to bear their heads for photographs.

Following the republic's Supreme Court verdict, they declared that they would take their fight to the national Supreme Court.